My favourite thought during the opening night of this year’s Sydney Festival was a flash back to the APEC meeting of ‘world leaders’ (in what?) just a few months ago when the very same city streets were blocked with barricades, helicopters intimidated the skies day and night, snipers lay on rooftops, and basically Sydney was bunkered down so a bunch of creepy people could get down and suck each other’s conga-lines.

If someone is that afraid of being gunned down in Sydney, well, they probably deserve it. This is not Baghdad, Beirut, Karachi or Tripoli; it’s not Kinshasa, Nairobi, Monrovia, Kigali or Mogadishu; it’s not Bogota or Caracas – where crowds of any size assemble at their own risk.

Or even mighty Rio de Janiero and its Mardi Gras, where apparently around 60 are killed a year in the process of a city having fun. We even put the Gold Coast and its ‘Schoolies Week’ to shame: apparently in not a single arrest!

With creeps like George Bush and John Howard out of the way, 200,000 Sydneysiders and those who love them, filled these same downtown city streets to overflowing with the ‘good vibes’ first officially so-named by the Beach Boys in the late 1960s - and reprised on this night of Saturday 5 January 2008 in Sydney’s grassy-knolled Domain by none other than Mr. Brian ‘Good Vibes’ Wilson himself. A crowd initially loosened up, if any was needed, by the homely vocal twang of ‘voice-o-the-people’ popster, Paul Kelly.

Wilson and Kelly were only two of a couple of hundred artists who, together, presented a vast banquet of popular music across the CBD. It was merely a matter of ‘take you pick’. Enjoy and move on.

Moi started with the revved up young’ns at Martin Place taking in:

“Synth-pop revisionist duo Chromeo, formed in Montreal in the early 21st century, a project of Audio Research honchos Dave One and Pee Thug (news flash: not their given names). Dave handled the electronics; Pee was the frequently processed vocalist. From the beginning, Chromeo made it clear that artful detachment, cheesy electro-funk breakdowns, and gleaming plastic beats -- not serious intent or aggressive musical regime change -- were the name of their well-dressed game.”
Johnny Loftus (http://music.yahoo.com/ar-306441-bio--Chromeo )

I couldn’t have put it better myself. We had crowd surfing, kids being told to climb down off things, and plastic cups of water were tossed at the stage. Man, it was truly bad! Round the corner in Phillip Street, the same Sydney-based gig organizers – Fuzzy – put together another set of performance dejays and players including Spank Rock.

“Spank Rock is American rapper Naeem Juwan. His style is generally described as a mix of underground hip hop, party rap and electro.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spank_Rock )

Thanks Wikipedia!

In between there were some wacky weddings on Macquarie Street and, a stroll away at Hyde Park, plenty of kids were up late while mum and dad, boyfriend and girlfriend, and other combos of a fairly uncontroversial nature, took to a makeshift dance floor encircling the Archibald Fountain to the sounds of tango, jive, salsa; with a big crowd congregating for Pink Martini.

“Pink Martini is like a romantic Hollywood musical of the 1940s or 50s – but with a global perspective which is modern,” says founder and artistic director Thomas M. Lauderdale. ‘We bring melodies and rhythms from different parts of the world together to create something which is new and beautiful. The Portland, Oregon-based ‘little orchestra’ was founded in 1994 by Lauderdale, a Harvard graduate and classically trained pianist, to play political fundraisers for progressive causes such as civil rights, the environment, affordable housing and public broadcasting. In the years following Pink Martini grew from four musicians to its current twelve, and has gone on to perform its multilingual repertoire on concert stages and with symphony orchestras throughout Europe, Asia, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Canada and the United States.” (http://www.pinkmartini.com/about/pm_about.html )

Thanks for that Pink Martini…

And so it was that 200,000 people from all walks of life put on the smiley faces and played and danced into the dawn. I will save my thoughts on artistic director Fegus Linehan’s 2008 programming – which has offended many traditionalists in advance - until a later ‘e-pistle’ (at last I have found my own word for ‘blog’!) But to dump the usual ‘celebrities only’ opening night party (or was there a secret one somewhere - lol) for one that truly embraced the public en masse scores very highly, in my book, as an opening move. Linehan put his faith in the power of good music across the genres, and the innate good-will born of an act of trust. He took a very big punt, possibly with odds (like me) on his side, kicking off his third Sydney Festival in total and faultless triumph.

And, if Three Dances by Nacho Duarto and Spain’s Compania Nacional de Danza is anything to go by (see tomorrow’s e-pistle), there’s plenty more good to come!

PS: don’t forget cheap tickets ($25) for anything on the day not yet sold out go on sale at a stall in Martin Place from 8am every morning. Another fantastic innovation.


Images:
Top Left: Brian Wilson. Photo - Guy Webster
Bottom Right: Pink Martini. Photo courtesy Inertia Recordings/Heinz Records